Being a freelancer isn’t easy. It’s isolating, there’s little safety, and you face a lot more hardships than regular employees.

This National Freelancers Day, we’re taking the time to reflect on the experiences of freelancers around the world and to celebrate the tools that help them.

What being a freelancer truly means

Passion leads us all to careers that we hope will fulfill our needs and desires, and sometimes we have to create those jobs ourselves.

Being self-employed is freeing. The sense of freedom you get from being your own boss and working on projects that you feel passionate about is life-changing. As a freelancer, your entire career is a choice: you are in charge of your own success.

But that doesn’t come without a price. Between irregular hours, financial instability, and a crowded market, it’s often a struggle to make a place for yourself in your industry while managing a healthy work-to-life balance.

It’s also easy to feel isolated within a community of life-minded people who, however similar their experiences are to your own, are and will always somehow be your competitors.

The struggles of the freelancer lifestyle

Findr CEO and professional photographer, Alex, became a full-time professional photographer in 2013. “What I love about being a freelance photographer,” he says, “is the sense of freedom that comes with it. You’re in complete control of your destiny.”

While he looks back on his pre-findr years as a time when he felt free to create, he still remembers the challenges he faced every day. “The hardest part was running and managing all the aspects of a business of my own,” he reflects. “I had to handle all the admin and marketing, all while trying to generate sales.”

These, he knows, are essential aspects of any business. But when your work is centred around such creative projects, having to manage all the office work constantly cuts time from doing what you love.

And no freelancer is safe from those struggles—no matter the industry.

Pauline, a freelance writer and translator, faces similar struggles on a day-to-day basis. “Promoting yourself is hard when the market is already so full, and it’s even harder to stand out” she says. “Being able to find clients and secure those relationships is essential but so hard to achieve.”

She doesn’t have much time, she explains, to both market herself and do the creative work it requires. “If I don’t want to jeopardise the quality of my work, I have to focus mostly on completing projects. But that can truly impact my business, at times.”

What freelancers can do to help their businesses

“A couple of years ago, I started working with a ghost writing company,” Pauline says. “The clients go straight to them with their projects, and the company then gets in touch with me to organise the interviews and the creation of the book.”

She explains that this process has truly helped her focus on what matters most to her: creating quality content. “I don’t have to do any of the marketing or admin myself anymore. It’s really been incredibly helpful.”

When it comes to Alex, he says that he “wanted to enable a source of work that has fewer barriers to entry once people are established as freelance photographers.”

And thus findr was born. Alex’s goal was to create a company that didn’t require the regular efforts and allowed people to focus on creation. After an easy sign-up process, photographers get to set their own fees and upload their portfolios to findr’s website, becoming visible to an international network of clients and fellow photographers. Findr handles all the rest.

“I’ve devoted my life to working with photography”, Alex says to explain his decision to create findr. “At the end of the day, freelancers need to earn money, and findr helps them do just that.”

Help is on its way

So no matter what type of work you do, there are tools out there to help you. And you are not alone. Findr’s entire community has grown drastically, going over 3,000 photographers, a number that’s constantly increasing.

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

Published by photofindr

Hi, we're findr, an online photography marketplace that aims at helping freelance photographers promote themselves and find more work.
It's completely free to sign up, and we handle every administrative detail -- all you need to do is shoot!
So head over to www.findr.me and start finding work today!
View all posts by photofindr